Abiding Fellowship, part 6

Look at what James says about this in his letter, James 1:22 “But prove yourselves doers of the Word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.” Be doers of the Word not hearers only. Hearers only deceive themselves. They think they are doing well while they are gradually dying. To have a diet of milk only – without the balance of meat, will ultimately kill us, spiritually. 
 

John 4:30‑34 “They went out of the city and were coming to Him. 31 In the meanwhile the disciples were requesting Him, saying, ‘Rabbi, eat.’ 32 But He said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ 33 The disciples therefore were saying to one another, ‘No one brought Him {anything} to eat, did He?’ 34 Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the Will of Him who sent Me, and to accomplish His work.’”  Jesus said, “My food, or meat, is in doing the Will of God.” So here is how the Word of God becomes meat to us. When I bring a teaching from God’s Word to you, the most I can present to you is milk, that which I have digested. If it is going to become meat to you then you must do (act on) the Word of God. It must be lived out in your life: 2 Timothy 3:7 “Always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” 
 

Suppose you went to every prayer seminar you could possibly attend. You learned everything there was to learn about prayer. You sat under the best teachers on the subject there are. But you never prayed. You never did spend any time in the presence of God. Without “the doing” of what you have taken in, you will forever live in a spiritual state of staleness, you will always be learning but never be able to come to the knowledge of the truth, never really acting on the truth you know. 
 

This, in my opinion, is a large part of what’s wrong with the church in America today: we hear the Gospel from 100 different sources and do nothing about it. We have deceived ourselves into believing that hearing alone is healthy. James says, “Don’t be deceived, be doers, not hearers only.” 
 

That brings us right back to the issue of spiritual capacity, or, the ability to learn spiritually.

Continued tomorrow